Storytelling
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Movie Reviews of Storytelling
Movie Review: American Liars
Summary: 4 Stars
Todd Solondz' is a self-indulgent filmmaker. He has absolutely no ego, and is able to depict his (or is it just 'a') misanthropic view of human nature that is more visceral and intoxicating than anything you'll see in the cinema. I always enjoy his films, even though I have to watch them through the cracks between my fingers."Storytelling" is most definitely a Todd Solondz movie. It's loaded with winceworthy moments and wretched characters who don't know that they are wretched. It's a geek fetishist's voyeuristic nirvana for it allows you behind doors and into rooms that any sane person would keep hidden from view. But it's a less successful movie than Solondz' previous efforts ("Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Happiness"; Solondz sure has a knack for benign titles that hide suburban nightmares), because it's unique narrative concept just doesn't work.
For those in the dark, "Storytelling" is divided into two unequal halves. "Fiction", the 20-minute first half, follows the exploits of Vi, a writing class student with a cerebral palsied boyfriend and a poor self-image. "NonFiction" shows the attempts of an amateurish documentary filmmaker named Toby Oxman, who intends to portray the contemporary American high school experience through the eyes of a greasy slacker named Scooby (!) Livingstone. In the former, fiction becomes nonfiction (Vi writes a story about a brutal sexual encounter, and is vilified for its racism in front of her class), while in the latter nonfiction becomes fiction (Oxman, in a vain attempt at commercialism, manipulates the Livingstone family's pain for the sake of comedy). In one of the movie's great ironic twists, Solondz casts Mike Schank as the documentarian's cameraman. Schank last appeared on screen as the laconic and dim buddy of Mark Borchardt, the subject of the 1999 documentary "American Movie". The subject becomes the objectifier, although in both cases he is horribly ineffectual.
This all sounds well and good. But the problem is that there is no relationship, other than a vague thematic one, between the movie's two halves. Many of the people leaving the theatre after the screening I saw bemoaned this lack of cohesion. If Solondz had presented a series of vignettes (maybe four or five) along the same lines, the film would have worked. But presenting the two halves as opposites, as he does quite explicitly through the use of title cards and the colour coding of the opening credit sequence, he is forcing the audience to expect connectedness. By not giving it to us, he is just being manipulative (and lazy) for art's sake. Which, in my opinion, diffuses much of the message.
That being said, Solondz directing style is effective in moments. He certainly knows that if you light and frame a scene in a conventional manner, as a sitcom or an insipid family drama might, then the perverse dialogue will hit with a greater impact. Watch how he handles the relationship between Mikey Livingstone, Scooby's precocious youngest brother, and Consuelo, the family's maid. Mikey is just trying to figure out why his maid, who he sees as having a pretty cushy life, is constantly unhappy. Consuelo, to her credit, takes Mikey's barbs with patience. Until, of course, she is pushed too far. Jonathan Osser, while amateurish, is all sweetness and light as the devilish Mikey. Lupe Ontiveros, who always seems to play the tormented maid character, shows why she's been typecast.
The rest of the cast are all fairly good. Standouts include Paul Giamatti, a Solondz look alike, as Toby. He manages superiority through his inherent inferiority, and is terribly funny. John Goodman, as the Livingstone patriarch, dominates the screen (as Goodman usually does) as a father unwilling to make waves, lest he lose his comfortable home and family. Mark Webber, who plays Scooby, gets the boy's sluggishness just right, not to mention his ignorance. In the "Fiction" segment, Selma Blair is the only one worth watching. She plays Vi with punkish aplomb, intense vulnerability, and obvious damage.
One side note: I wish Solondz had beefed up the parts of Franka Potente, as Toby's film editor, and Conan O'Brien, who displays fine acting chops as late night talk show host Conan O'Brien!
In the end, "Storytelling" is enjoyable, often funny (assuming you find the idea of someone's domineering parents being burned at the stake in a ridiculous dream sequence), visceral, and harsh. It doesn't reach the heights that Solondz' previous work does, but that's not for lack of aiming high. It just misses its target.
Movie Review: Interesting story but harsh - with no human compassion
Summary: 4 Stars
I am still unsure that I have totally understood this movie; however, I am sure about enjoying its viewing quite a lot (especially the second part), and this in spite of the fact that I cannot say I felt a lot for, or identified with any of the characters. I think in both parts the personalities are all somewhat grotesque; however, each of the characters has certain behaviors which are very human and very familiar - although not "socially accepted". An example for this would be Mickey, the youngest son in the second part, hypnotizing his father and asking that from now on he, Mickey, will be the favorite son.
The first part is called "fiction" but rather, tries to show the reality of what we choose to term fiction. We meet a few participants in a literary workshop were the student-writers build on their personal experience for their story-writing and then succumb to the criticism of their class mates and the class teacher whose harsh verdict affects all members of the group.
The literary class cannot accept one of the stories and claims it to be "racist" while our frustrated heroine (Vi) tries to convince the class that what she wrote about can happen in reality and did in fact happen (as the viewer well knows). Vi is fragile and sweet and we are totally on her side although not all her actions and behaviors are fully comprehensible.
There is something quite ruthless about this part. A very hard uncomfortable statement about human beings, their cruelty and motives that immediately brings to mind "Happiness" another Todd Solondz movie which leaves you with the same uncomfortable feeling. You get to see people in some of their rather low and ugly moments.
The second part is termed "non fiction" but seemed a lot more fabricated to me... so many things happen to all the characters that I have to admit I remained "emotionally indifferent". I am not trying to say that I did not like the story or found it uninteresting, on the contrary. Its just that what happened on the screen, starting with the telephone call between Toby Oxman, an aspiring producer (who works in a shoe store in order to make a living) and his high school friend and ending in the last terrible scene - was just too grotesque for me to identify with.
I have to stress again that I did like this part; I enjoyed the acting, especially John Goodman who is one of my favorite actors (and off course I laugh whenever I see him on screen even if the scene is rather tragic). I just remained as a non involved viewer who watches the film "neutrally" without taking sides (something that did happen on the first part) because all is too "far fetched" for me . This part tells the story of Scooby, a passive indifferent teenager who is filmed by Toby as someone who is in the dramatic "College application stage". Scooby does not want to go to College and is only trying to please his father (John Goodman). Scooby's personal story and the family events that follow could have been portrayed as a tragedy but the producer keeps looking for the funny side. In a way I felt that what I sensed (or rather not sensed) while watching "Storytelling" is similar to what the producer in the movie inside the movie, was trying to create. The producer keeps asking his friend "...but isn't this funny? are these not funny parts...?" "No" answers his friend - "you have a tragedy here". Toby's film however, is accepted in the trial viewing as a comedy. I feel the conversation described above also explains what I felt - is this sad? Is this grotesque? Is it funny? Is it ok to laugh?. As in the first part this piece does not show people at their best. There is not one compassionate character in this part and all characters seem to get their punishment.
Movie Review: Solondz grinds in the bitterness
Summary: 4 Stars
While Todd Solondz' previous film, Happiness, was an acidic--and mordantly funny--attack on suburban life, Storytelling goes one "better" (if one can say that) and pushes the director's penchant for vitriol to the max. The two unequal components of the film, Fiction and Non-Fiction, are meant to be complementary, but do not function as such. The first, Fiction, is mercifully short, juxtaposing the intense contempt of a black prize-winning writer, relegated to the role of a fiction writing prof in a two-bit college, with his snide, spoiled, white, know-it-all students, almost all girls. He unequivocally blasts their work. In a powerful revelatory scene, the black man vents his tremendous frustration on one of the white girls whose attempt to forge a relationship with a boy in the class, stricken with cerebral palsy, fails because of his own fears of inadequacy. Her sexual frustration absolutely must have an outlet, and so she turns to the only other available male she knows.
The phrase "mercifully short" is used because the characterizations here are flat and one-dimensional. In retrospect, Solondz may have done this intentionally to illustrate his own tremendous disgust at the rage inherent in societal conventions that destroy what should be (or at least is meant by) civilized behavior: racism and 'sub-human' categorization of those with physical afflictions. The bitterness is so deep in this short piece, it leaves a really strong taste; you can feel this down in your gut. Not only is it not pleasant; it's not that entertaining. He makes his point by smashing, not hitting, the viewer over the head.
The second piece, Non-Fiction, is much more fully realized, and chronicles the simultaneous activity of a schleppy documentary film-maker (Paul Giamatti in one of his best roles, bar none) with a bizarre dysfunctional family, played convincingly by John Goodman and Julie Hagerty as the parents, Lupe Ontiveros as the beleagured domestic, and some talented newcomers in the roles of the sons. Here Solondz does a masterful job of combining hypnosis, a sports-related disastrous injury, and death by gas with a jaundiced view of what "entertainment" in America really means. A closet gay teenager who aspires to be the next Conan O'Brien is picked by the hapless filmmaker as his subject--clearly a choice driven by desperation--and an outrageous twist of fate ultimately leaves the filmmaker at loose ends and the teenager even more rootless than he is normally.
This piece is without question one of Solondz' best works and, at the same time, is a denunciation of typical American suburban life even more bitter (if that's possible) than that depicted in Happiness. It would have been truly great to see this expanded to feature length. Rumor has it that Solondz actually shot three segments for the film. The third was not used; perhaps it will turn up in a future work, or in the inevitable DVD release.
Overall this is a curious two-part film which is saved by its second story. No film maker in the United States working today has as much hatred for American mores as Solondz, but, as shown in Happiness and the Non-Fiction part of Storytelling, his intensely black humor/ferocious irony makes his work compelling.
Movie Review: Cruel & funny exploration of the art of narrative
Summary: 4 Stars
In "Storytelling", Todd Solondz wields his darkly hysterical wit against the art of narrative. In two stories - a shorter one ("Fiction")starring Selma Blair as a ruthlessly abused college-writing student, and a longer one ("Non-Fiction") featuring an extra-shlubby Paul Giamatti as a would-be documentarian. Giamatti and Blair play writers lacking any control over their stories or even any basic idea of how to tell their stories.
In "Fiction", Blair is Vi, a middling aspiring writer in a college writing workshop populated partly by other middling aspiring writers, and partly by mercilessly efficient critics who pull apart the stories of others, and their authors as well. Told that she's got little talent, Vi commits herself to turn her life into a story, then write about it. It's an interesting story, but a short one - Vi is too insubstantial a character to withstand the Solondz-treatment, and once the point is made, there's little left of her to survive. (Even if her story was true, her professor intones, once it's on paper, it's fiction; that's the cope de grace against her - following a raft of utterly destructive reviews by fellow students that must be heard to be believed.)
In "Non-fiction" Giamatti tries to document...well he's not sure. A serial failure (acting, law school, writing), Giamatti decides to try documentary-movie making - but he's only got a vague idea of what he can and wants to do, and he's too weak-willed to keep his subjects from commandeering his movie. Giamatti's focus is "Scooby" Livingston, a very familiar Solondz-type (middle child of a comfortably middle-class modern-Jewish family). Scoob is utterly alienated - he's undirected, unambitious (he wants to be Conan O'brien's sidekick) sexually conflicted, and stuck between two brothers ever more in control than he is. As in "Fiction", Giamatti is paired up with a narrative conscious - a producer better able to chart the direction of Giamatti's film than Giamatti can. There are no stand-out performances, because Solondz integrates his characters like the complex components of a WMD - Giamatti & his producer, Vi & her professor(Robert Wisdom), Scooby's homophobic and domestic autocrat father (John Goodman) and his sons.
Both stories excel at dissecting the narrative process and revealing the flaws of the failed creators, and they're both quite funny - nobody can do bittersweet & funny at the same time like Solondz. This may be the single cruelest film that you'll ever laugh your head off watching.
Movie Review: Everyone always has a story to tell.
Summary: 4 Stars
Todd Solondz's `Welcome to the Dollhouse' showed comic/absurd promise; his masturbation scene in `Happiness' overstepped the boundary of film taste but got everyone's attention. While I didn't enjoy "Storytelling" as much as I did the Director's two previous films, "Happiness" and "Welcome to The Dollhouse," Solondz continues to amaze with his depictions of just how awkward true life really is. As always, he masterfully shows the oft times tactless, cynical, transparent motivations of everyday suburban life and combines them with outrageous situations, giving a humorous view into the myriad of interesting quirky characters he creates. As with Happiness, Storytelling has no background characters. Each character gets fully explored in a way that no matter how familiar or foreign a specific character's behavior might be to you, you can't help but understand their motivations. Solondz can develop over 10 characters in 88 minutes while most conventional Hollywood films fail to portray just one in any given 3 hour "epic".
Selma Blair and Leo Fitzpatrick give incredible performances in the first segment of this film titled "Fiction". John Goodman is at his best here in the film's second segment "Non-fiction", not to mention it was a good to see Julie Haggerty in it.
One of the film's most honest moments (and there are MANY) comes in the beginning of the Non-Fiction segment, during a phone call Paul Giamatti gives to a female classmate he hadn't spoken to since high school. While hilarious, I couldn't help but feel bad for his character, which gets fleshed out in the almost confessional tone of the conversation (which of course, he blunders).
I don't want to dig far into the plot because the elements of shock and surprise that are Solondz bread and butter should only be revealed by others, suffice it to say I recommend this movie very highly. I look forward to anything this director does.